A firefighter walks past a burning Air France jet after it skidded off a runway and burst into flames during a thunderstorm at Pearson International Airport in Toronto on Tuesday Aug. 2, 2005.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Toronto Sun, Fred Thornhill, CP

Passenger jetliner caught fire Tuesday Aug. 2, 2005 after skidding off a runway in the rain at Pearson airport in Toronto in this image from television.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Ministry of Transportation

In this television image, smoke and fire billow from an Air France passenger jet after it burst into flames after skidding off the runway while trying to land at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2005.

Photo credit: AP PHOTO/CP, CBC News

TORONTO
(AP) -- A jetliner carrying 309 people skidded off a runway while
landing in a thunderstorm, sliding into a ravine and breaking into
pieces, but remarkably everyone aboard survived by jumping to safety in
the moments before the plane burst into flames.

Some 43
passengers suffered minor injuries in the 4:03 p.m. (2003 GMT) Tuesday
crash landing of Air France Flight 358 from Paris _ the first time an
Airbus A340 had crashed in its 13 years of commercial service.

The
plane, carrying 297 passengers and 12 crew, overran the runway by 200
yards (meters) at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, said Steve
Shaw, a vice president of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority.

While
Shaw said there were 43 injured passengers, Air France said in a
statement that 22 passengers were treated for minor injuries.

The
aircraft skidded down a slope into a wooded area next to one of
Canada's busiest highways, and some survivors said that passengers
scrambled up to the road to catch rides with passing cars.

Relatives and friends were taken to the Sheraton hotel at the airport and asked to wait there until the passengers joined them.

Several
hours later, passengers in red blankets were taken on buses to the
airport Sheraton to meet with their loved ones and friends. Some were
distressed that they had to go through customs before they were
reunited.

Gwen Dunlop of Toronto said she was returning from vacation in France.

''It happened so quickly,'' she said. ''It was a little bit like being in a movie.''

She said at first the passengers believed they had landed safely and clapped with relief.

''Only
seconds later it started really moving and obviously it wasn't OK,''
said Dunlop. ''At some point the wing was off. The oxygen masks never
came down; the plane was filling up with smoke.''

She said one of the flight attendants tried to calm passengers and tell them that everything was fine.

''One
of the hostesses said, 'You can calm down, it's OK,' and yet the plane
was on fire and smoke was pouring in,'' Dunlop told The AP. I don't
like to criticize, but the staff did not seem helpful or prepared.''

Dunlop,
who was being ushered away from journalists by airport officials, said
some passengers went down emergency chutes, while others just jumped
out on their own.

''We were all trying to go up a hill; it was all mud and we lost our shoes. We were just scrambling, people with children.''

She said it was pouring rain and lightning and thunder added to the drama. ''We were just thrown into the weather.''

Gay
Bopaul said her husband called her on a cell phone shortly after the
crash, hiding under a bridge. He said the passengers were all sharing
their mobile phones so they could called their families.

Roel Bramar, who was in the back of the plane, said he used an escape chute to get out of the plane.

''We had a hell of a roller coaster coming down the ravine,'' Bramar told CNN.

Bramar
and fellow passenger Olivier Dubois both said the power went off
shortly before landing, perhaps after the plane was hit by lighting.

Dubois said he did not expect a crash landing and that there was no warning from the captain.

''It
was very very fast,'' Dubois said. ''As soon as the plane stopped, they
immediately opened the side of the plane where we couldn't see anything
and they told us to jump.''

There was no time to spare.

Just
moments after the crash, a portion of the plane's wing could be seen
jutting from the trees as smoke and flames poured from the middle of
its broken fuselage.

A row of emergency vehicles lined up behind
the wreck, and a fire truck sprayed the flames with water. A government
transportation highway camera recorded the burning plane, and the
footage was broadcast live on television in Canada and the United
States.

Dubois said some passengers scrambled onto nearby Highway
401, where cars stopped, picked them up and took them to the airport.
Two busloads of passengers were taken to an airport medical center.

Rayed
Hantash said his brother, 25-year-old Mohammed Hantash, was on the
flight and called him on his cell phone immediately after the crash to
tell him he was fine.

''As the plane stopped, they jumped off and
made their way across to the highway,'' Hantash said. ''I'm going to
give him a good hug and good kiss and take him home.''

Airbus spokeswoman Barbara Kracht said the A340 has never crashed before in its 13 years of commercial service.

Chris
Yates, an aviation specialist with Jane's Transport magazine, said the
A340 is a very popular ''workhorse'' among carriers serving Asian and
trans-Atlantic routes, with a very good safety record.

Although
it was too early to draw any conclusions about the accident, Yates
said, ''we're probably talking about a weather-related issue here.''

Although
modern airliners are safer than ever, he said, extreme conditions can
still be dangerous, especially during takeoff and landing.

''You
can never account for weather,'' Yates said. ''A thunderstorm can
happen anywhere _ it comes down to the judgment of the air traffic
controller and the skill of the pilot to determine whether it's
appropriate to land or to divert elsewhere.''

Tuesday's airplane
crash in Toronto came exactly 20 years after an American disaster that
focused renewed attention to wind shear, a natural phenomenon that can
make airplanes drop out of the sky.

While the cause of the
Toronto crash has not yet been determined, the fact that it happened
during a thunderstorm raises the possibility of wind shear.

The
1985 airline crash at Dallas-Forth Worth airport, which killed more
than 137 people, made dealing with wind shear ''a national imperative''
for the U.S. federal government, said Larry Cornman of the National
Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Since then,
he said Tuesday, systems to detect wind shear have been installed at
almost all major airports in the United States. Cornman said the
Canadian government investigated installing such systems during the
1990s, but added he did not know how many have been installed.

Wind
shear is a sudden change in wind speed or direction. The most dangerous
kind, called a microburst, is caused by air descending from a
thunderstorm.

The last major jet crash in North America was on
Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 lost part of its tail
and plummeted into a New York City neighborhood, killing 265 people.
Safety investigators concluded that the crash was caused by the pilot
moving the rudder too aggressively.

Toronto's Lester B. Pearson
International Airport handles over 28 million passengers a year.
Located 17 miles (27 kilometers) west of Toronto in the town of
Mississauga, it has three terminals. Air France operates out of
Terminal 3. After Tuesday's crash, Shaw said airport operations would
resume by 8:30 p.m.

Paris-based Air France-KLM Group is the
world's largest airline in terms of revenue. It is the product of the
French flagship airline's acquisition last year of Dutch carrier KLM.
For the year ended in March, the company earned US$443 million
(euro362.6 million) on revenues of US$24.1 billion (euro19.7 billion).

Air
France-KLM operates a fleet of 375 planes and flies 1,800 daily
flights, according to the company's Web site. In the last fiscal year,
it carried 43.7 million passengers to 84 countries around the globe.
That made it the largest European carrier in terms of the number of
passengers carried.

The A340 is part of the A330/A340 family of
six related aircraft, all sharing the same frame, manufactured by
Airbus, which is 80 percent owned by European Aeronautic Defence and
Space Co. Britain's BAE Systems PLC owns the rest.

The craft
owned and flown by Air France is the A340-300. The plane, usually is
equipped to carry 295 passengers, and fly 7,400 miles (11,900
kilometers) before refueling.

There are currently 237 of the A340-300 and its sister craft, the A340-200, in operation, according to the manufacturer.

_____

Editors: Carolyn Thompson of AP Buffalo and Rebecca Cook of AP Toronto contributed to this report.